Easily beating back a challenger who sought to capitalize on the soda tax debacle, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle claimed victory Tuesday night over former Chicago Ald. Bob Fioretti as she seeks what she says will be her final term.

Preckwinkle entered her election night party on the South Side to applause from about 80 supporters and declared victory after a race that focused heavily on the quickly aborted tax. In comments to reporters after her speech, she took a jab at those who had attacked her over the tax.

“It turns out I won the election, thank you,” she said. “If you want good government, you have to pay for it.”

With 96 percent of precincts reporting, Preckwinkle had about 61 percent of the vote to Fioretti’s 39 percent in the Democratic primary. There were no Republican candidates in the race for board president, meaning Preckwinkle is all but certain to retain her post in November.

Rancor over the soda tax dominated much of the latter part of Preckwinkle’s second term as well as the election cycle, both for her post and other seats on the County Board.

In the 12th District Democratic primary race on Chicago’s North and Northwest sides, an incumbent who opposed the soda tax was trailing a union-backed candidate who argued layoffs triggered by the tax’s repeal diminished key county services. Challenger Bridget Degnen had 55 percent of the vote to board member John Fritchey’s 45 percent with 95 percent of precincts reporting.

In a Twitter post around 10 p.m., Fritchey wrote, “About 30 minutes ago, I sent the following message to my opponent: I just wanted to say congratulations. You have the opportunity to do some great things for a lot of people, I hope you use it well.”

Preckwinkle in the fall of 2016 began pushing for the penny-an-ounce sweetened beverage tax as a way to raise revenue while discouraging the consumption of unhealthy drinks. But her proposal generated confusion among the thousands of retailers registered to collect the tax, as well as anger among consumers asked to pay nearly $3 more for a case of soda.

The soda tax went into effect last August. After an advertising blitz by the beverage industry that stoked widespread public outrage, the County Board repealed the tax at of the end of November. After the repeal, the County Board approved a 2018 budget that included 321 layoffs.

The soda tax left Preckwinkle — who was unopposed in the 2014 Democratic primary — looking vulnerable, and Fioretti officially entered the race in November. During the pop tax debate, he was one of many pushing for repeal.

During the campaign, Fioretti suggested Preckwinkle would try to reinstate the tax. Preckwinkle, who has been board president since 2010 and is seeking her third term, unequivocally denied she would do that, though she left the door open to other tax hikes, as did Fioretti. She cast herself during the race as a responsible manager who reduced the number of jail inmates and cut the county’s debt, among other things.

Earlier in the evening, Hyde Park resident Vanessa James, who said she met Preckwinkle when she saw the then-alderman waiting for the bus and gave her a ride downtown, defended Preckwinkle’s effort to collect additional revenue from soda sales.

“That was a tough call,” James said of the soda tax. “You need to do what’s necessary to bring in more revenue, but it got jammed up in the execution.”

Others at the event said much the same thing.

“She had to make lemonade out of bad lemons,” said the Rev. Renaldo Kyles, 46, of Calumet City. “The community supports her. She’s a leader and she did what she had to do.”

Fioretti had also criticized Preckwinkle over her alliance with Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios. Reporting by the Tribune and ProPublica Illinois has shown that Berrios has presided over a flawed system for assessing home values that has benefited the wealthy at the expense of needier residents. Preckwinkle is a vice chairwoman of the Cook County Democratic Party; Berrios, who conceded defeat in his bid for re-election Tuesday, is the chairman.

Fioretti faced a significant financial disadvantage. Since jumping into the race in mid-November, campaign funds controlled by Fioretti collected about $146,000, according to state campaign finance records. Since her last primary win four years ago, Preckwinkle had raised more than $3.8 million — including more than $650,000 since Fioretti announced his bid against her, records show.

Preckwinkle said this would be her final term in office. “I started out as a teacher. I think I’ll go back to education,” she said.

Along with the race between Fritchey and Degnen, incumbent Richard Boykin faced challenger Brandon Johnson, a Chicago Teachers Union organizer. That race was too close to call late Tuesday.

Johnson, like Degnen, had the support of unions that were critical of the layoffs that followed the repeal of the soda tax.

Spending in those two races went beyond typical County Board battles, with contributions to those four candidates totaling some $1.4 million in the last days of the campaign.